When Charity awoke next morning the sun was shining cheerfully in upon
the smooth yellow floor of her little room and its mats of braided
rags. The sky was of the bluest and the earth of the whitest; a flock
of sparrows were wishing each other Merry Christmas in the boughs of
an old appletree near by; the cattle in the barn, contentedly
ruminating over their morning allowance of hay, seemed rehearsing to
each other the old story of the manger and the wonderful night in
Palestine. As these pleasant sights and sounds stole in upon the
girl’s senses, a happy smile broke upon her lips and she felt at peace
with the whole world. Then came, like a flash of red lightning out of
the sparkling blue sky, the memory of the preceding day. Her brain
reeled under the shock of returning recollection, as, one by one,
every kindly evasive word of her informants came back to her. But
Charity was a girl of quick impulses and decided action. In five
minutes she had made up her mind what to do. Half an hour later she
was standing behind grandmother’s chair at Farmer Ralston’s with white
face and set lips. The family, she found, were somewhat concerned
about Tom’s absence, but they had not been in any real alarm, as he
might have changed his plans and remained in the city, leaving Charity
with her friends for the night. Now they crowded about her, all asking
questions at once, and growing momently more frightened at her
silence. She managed to tell them that Tom had not kept his
appointment--that she could learn nothing definite about him--that she
had guessed from what little information she had been able to obtain,
that he had been taken sick and carried to the hospital--or somewhere;
it was nothing serious, she was sure, and at any rate she was going up
to the city that morning on the train to find out all about it. Tom’s
father was too old and feeble to undertake the trip, and his sister
had better not leave home that day--Christmas. She could do better
alone, as she knew the streets pretty well (here her voice failed her
a little), and besides, it would only worry Tom to see them all
coming. So she went as she wished to, alone.
Arriving in the city, she examined a directory in the nearest drug
store and copied off the numbers and localities of all the police
stations in the city proper. Then she found her way without much
trouble to the market and asked the tall, broad-shouldered policeman
on duty there for directions to the nearest station. He looked down
pityingly on the young girl, appealing to him with her white face and
eyes that betrayed her suffering on that glad Christmas morning.
“Nothing serious, is it, miss? A fight, maybe, or something o’ that
sort?”
“Oh, no, sir! I only want to see if--if--somebody”--
The kind-hearted officer guessed her trouble immediately.
“I see, I see,” said he, softening his voice still more. “He didn’t
get home last night after he was paid off. Well, I guess you’ll find
it all right; anyway, I hope you will. Take your first turn to the
left, and two blocks further you’ll come to my station. Tell the
sergeant you saw Brown, and that I sent you to him for information.”
Charity thanked him with a grateful look that was better than words,
and moved with rapid steps along the icy sidewalk in the direction
indicated. She was courteously received at the station, but no one
knew anything about Tom. Nor did they in the next station she visited,
nor in the third or fourth. It was now nearly noon, and people were
beginning to sit down to their Christmas dinners. The table at Farmer
Ralston’s was always a jolly place, and at Christmas time the fun was
uproarious. Charity had been invited every year since she could
remember, and she gave a little gulp as she thought of the row of
bright, laughing faces that would have been gathered in the old
kitchen, still sweet with the resinous odors of the evergreen that had
lain there in piles in those last happy days that now seemed ages ago.
Wearily she mounted the granite steps of Station Five and repeated her
question. The lieutenant, a brisk, wiry man, with a heavy gray
moustache and little, piercing eyes, cast a quick glance at her and
consulted his book. Presently he gave a little nod, and raising his
voice, called out, “Norcross, here a minute!”
A uniformed officer in an adjoining room opened himself like a kind of
long jack-knife, rose from the bench where he had been reclining and
stood at the walnut rail in front of his superior, awaiting orders.
The lieutenant took a key from the rack at his side and handed it to
Norcross.
“This lady wants to see No. 3. Show her down.”
The officer bowed respectfully and led the way down a flight of stone
steps into what at first appeared to be a sort of cellar, with grated
windows near the ceiling on one side and a row of iron-barred doors on
the other.
“There,” said the officer, pointing.
Charity paused a moment and pressed her hand against her heart; for a
moment she could not have spoken, it beat so fiercely. Then she
advanced across the brick floor, and standing by the door of Cell No.
3, looked in through the bars.
At first she could see nothing, but, as her eyes became accustomed to
the dim light, she could distinguish at one side a narrow iron bed,
and lying motionless upon it, his head buried in his arms, a crumpled,
stained, wretched figure--yes, Tom!
The rustle of the girl’s dress fell upon his ear. He raised his head
slightly, recognized the sound, turned away again without looking her
in the face, and shook with such a tempest of sobs that Charity
trembled and could not speak the grave, deliberate words she had
prepared on the way.
“Landlord, fill the flowing bowl!”
sang some poor creature shrilly, two or three doors away. How Charity
remembered all these things afterward! While the officer stepped aside
to quiet the noisy prisoner she forced herself at last to speak.
“Mr. Ralston”--Tom started, and she saw his grasp tighten on the iron
rail of the bed, “I have come to take you away from this place. I
shall send for the bail commissioner at once” (she had learned her
lesson well, poor child!), “so that you can catch the two o’clock
train. No!” she went on quickly, checking him with a gesture as he was
about to speak, “you mustn’t stay here another night, nor another
hour. It would kill your father if he knew it, and we couldn’t answer
his questions to-night.”
The strong man bowed his head again, without a word. She hesitated an
instant, then left him, and walked across the floor and up the stone
stairway with a firm step. Tom looked after her wistfully, but she did
not even glance toward his cell. Within half an hour he was sent for,
and found Charity, with the commissioner and the sergeant, sitting
behind the rail, in the room above. The bail was quickly arranged, the
officer handed over a jack-knife and a few coppers he had taken from
Tom’s pockets the night before, and told him he could go where he
pleased until nine o’clock the next morning, when the court opened.
There was a constrained silence for a moment in the little office. At
last Tom raised his eyes, with a look in them half questioning, half
appealing, to the girl’s white face, at the same time involuntarily
extending his hand toward her. For the first time in his life he found
no response in the brown eyes, staring stonily out of the barred
windows.
His hand slowly dropped to his side. With a dazed look he turned first
to the officers, then to Charity, as if he did not understand. Still
there was no response in the brown eyes, staring stonily out of the
barred windows. Still Tom stood there helplessly, not quite
understanding it all. Glancing at his stained and rumpled clothes he
brushed them a little, mechanically, passed his hand over his forehead
once or twice, then turned humbly toward the door, passed out
bareheaded and was gone.
How Charity found her way home she never knew. When she entered her
own little chamber at dusk and buried her aching head in her pillow,
she had a vague recollection of wandering about the gay city streets
for hours, of finally seeking the railroad station, of cooling her hot
forehead against the frosty pane of the car, and watching the
snowflakes that came faster and faster from the darkening sky. Tom had
come home, the station-master had told her carelessly, and that was
all she cared to know.
How he endured the ignominy of appearing and paying his fine in the
municipal court the next day, she did not ask; nor did she even see
him for a week. After the excitement of that gloomy Christmas came,
with the reaction, a complete nervous exhaustion, which mercifully
spared her the torture of questioning eyes and tongues until beyond
New Year’s--that should have been her wedding-day.
Meanwhile she wavered irresolutely between one and another course of
action. Now she felt she must cry out to him to forgive her own cruel
hardness in his time of trouble; now the Puritan blood she had
inherited asserted itself, and her face grew hard again as she thought
of his weakness.
The meeting could be put off no longer. It came, and in the same dear
old kitchen where they had worked together. The man looked straight
into her eyes and said, quietly:
“Charity, I have done you and myself a great wrong. I shall try to do
better. God knows how hard I shall try--am trying! Will you forgive
me? Will you help me?”
After all, she was hardly prepared for this, and though she began
bravely enough with, “Mr. Ralston,” she soon broke down altogether.
“Of course,” she told him, “the wedding must be postponed
indefinitely. Further than that--I can’t tell what--O Tom! how
could”--she began afresh, but stopped at his look, and slowly walked
out of the room and house.
V
Slowly the long weeks of late winter succeeded each other, alike
monotonous, gray and dreary. Tom Ralston worked, at first manfully,
then doggedly, on the farm, fighting with a strong will against public
opinion and private temptation. Everybody had heard of his fall. Young
girls eyed him curiously from the opposite side of the road, and the
frequenters of the village store gathered at night to sit around the
stove, heels in air, and bring out stories of old Major Ralston, two
or three generations back, whose dissipations had been town talk; and
the gossips gravely wagged their heads and said: “’Twas bound to crop
out sooner or later.”
So passed the icy months, and song-sparrows and bluebirds began to
flit among the naked boughs like dreams of spring. Following them came
the robins, plump and cheery embodiments of summer. One morning in
April the maples and oaks stretched out their arms, full of rosy and
restless baby leaves born in the night. The heats of July parched the
land; September laid her gentle hand upon its brow until it was
refreshed and slept.
Still Tom Ralston worked on, through sun and shower, seed-time and
harvest, beginning at last to win approving nods and kindly smiles
and words from his self-appointed critics. Still Charity, with heavy
heart, went about her routine of household duties, from which all the
sweetness, the vague looking forward, the pretty, girlish longing
which had of late clothed them were gone. When she met Tom, as she was
often obliged to, she spoke not coldly indeed, but as to a mere
acquaintance. Right or wrong, she had conscientiously chosen her
course, and she would keep it to the end. She would never marry a man
who might become a drunkard, and perhaps leave his curse to be
inherited by his innocent children.
It was five days before Christmas when Charity, having finished her
daily tasks, stole away to spend the last hour or two of the short
winter afternoon in her favorite walk, an old logging-path through the
pine woods. The air was deliciously clear and sweet. Overhead, a flock
of chickadees called to her merrily, and hung upside down among the
tasseled boughs in search of insects and other small bird food. Not an
anxious search, by any means; rather a contented one, on the whole, as
if they were quite sure their daily bread had been given them, and
they were only to see that it was not wasted. Charity half
unconsciously took note of their happy little movements to and fro,
as, for the hundredth time, she went over and over the arguments
against forgiving Tom. She had just reached the triumphant “lastly,”
in her course of reasoning, when, suddenly startled by the breaking of
a twig, she glanced up, to see the subject of her syllogisms not
twenty feet away, gathering evergreen. Like the rushing waters of a
great tide, sweeping away her artificial landmarks and barriers, came
the overwhelming conviction that it was she, and not the man before
her, who needed forgiveness.
At the sound of her dress, Tom, too, had started up, as he did in the
cell a year ago; but presently went on with his task, stooping low
over a refractory vine of princess pine.
“It was the least I could do,” he said humbly, and with evident
effort. “I shall take it up to the city myself and sell it for the
girls.”
Something in her very silence, or perhaps a slight exclamation that
escaped her lips, made him look up. She stood there, alternately
paling and flushing, with a look in her eyes he had not seen for many
a long day. He sprang to his feet, but she put out her hand to check
him.
“Tom,” she began, with quivering lip, “dear Tom, can you forgive”--
What was the use of her hand then! If she had been surrounded by
Napoleon’s Old Guard I believe Tom would have got at her somehow.
Forgive her! Bless you, if you had seen him for the next five minutes,
or had heard them talk as they walked home together beneath the pines,
you would have been puzzled to know which forgave or which was
forgiven, or which had done right or wrong, or whether either had ever
doubted the other for an instant of their lives.
“‘Suffereth long and is kind,’” whispered grandmother that night,
stroking the girl’s brown hair.
Of course Tom went home with her afterward, in the old way, and made
footprints again before her door, while the moon smiled to itself and
poured down its silvery blessing upon them.
So they had a merry Christmas after all, and a New Year’s wedding, on
which occasion grandmother was resplendent in fresh ribbons, and the
girls laughed and cried by turns.
The hard, dreary year of Tom’s struggle is long since past, but as
Christmastide draws nigh and the wreaths are hung at the windows,
Charity Ralston, the dearest and brightest little woman in all the
country, looks fondly into her husband’s strong, manly face, and lays
her cheek upon his shoulder in a way that tells him she remembers. He,
too, has never forgotten, and, standing there in the twilight, with
the sweet Christmas incense of the evergreen about them, he tells her
again how he endured, and hoped, and loved, and ends by holding her
close in his arms, while she whispers, “Merry Christmas, Tom!”